A Home for Daniel

I have been at family history research for so long that folks who don’t know what else to do with family memorabilia simply ship their items to me.

That’s how I got Daniel, 19-years old and handsome. I received his portrait in a lovely oval frame, the kind with convex glass, so popular in the first few decades of the 20^th century.   For years, this portrait had been passed from one relative to another until Daniel was delivered to me.

Born on the North Dakota prairie in the last months of the 19th century, Daniel was seven when his oldest brother, my grandfather Karl Just, married my grandmother, Katharina Meidinger.

I look at Daniel’s portrait for clues and see an earnest, sweet, innocent face. Hair parted perfectly, an outdoor boy tolerating a suit and tie for some special occasion? I scan through my collection of photos from that era but can’t find another photo of Daniel.

Daniel Just was born October 29, 1899, the eighth child of Christof and Elizabeth (Wanner) Just. Christof and Elizabeth were 24 and 22 years old when they left their lovely village of Kassel, in South Russia, to come to Dakota Territory in 1884. Daniel was baptized and confirmed, at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, rural Zeeland, ND. The very church his parents helped to organize in 1893.

In my early years of conducting family interviews with those now-deceased great aunts and uncles, no one could tell me much about Daniel. Instead they would rock back and forth, clucking their tongues, shaking their heads, murmuring words like “it was a sad time of War and Influenza.” Our parents, they would say, “never got over it” Got over what? I would ask. But they were through with me – no more talk of Daniel. Sometimes it is just too hard to talk about certain sorrows. Those clucking, head shaking, murmuring surviving siblings of Daniel that I interviewed in the 1970’s are my only window into pain my stoic ancestors endured.

I ponder his photo and wonder…. was Daniel a good student? Did he have a favorite subject? Did he like farming? Did he feel called to do anything but work the land? Would he have had a choice? We will never know.

What we do know is this: Daniel was stricken with The Spanish Flu (also known as Influenza and The Great Pandemic) in the fall of 1918 and was nursed back to health by his mother, Elizabeth. During that time between recovery and complete wellness his father needed him to come outside to assist with some chores. His siblings remembered that Daniel relapsed and the illness returned with a vengeance taking Daniel away forever on November 9, 1918. The grieving family buried him at St. Andrew’s.

The Spanish Flu took an enormous toll around the world in 1918. In North Dakota, the majority of the state’s residents lived in rural areas.  The illness showed no rural/urban bias and by October, 1918, state officials, fearing that the disease was spreading too rapidly, issued orders forbidding trains to transport patients suffering from Influenza.  Many in Daniel’s community in south central North Dakota died of the disease. For my great-grandparents the loss was especially deep. They lost their first child on the voyage to America in 1884, and were forced to bury him at sea. Now they had to surrender another child, to the ravages of a pandemic.

Daniel’s portrait hung in the parlor of his parent’s home and was meant to keep his memory close.  But Daniel’s parents didn’t live much longer. Elizabeth Just died the next year at the age of 58 years on August 17, 1919. Daniel’s father, Christof, died on February 20^th, 1925 at the age of 65 years. Both are buried at St. Andrew’s near their son, Daniel.

I have no idea how many hands this beautiful portrait of young Daniel passed through before he came to me in the late 1990’s. Clearly his family cared because I received the portrait - some eighty years after his death - in perfect condition.

Daniel had a home with me for many years. In the summer of 2012, a 2^nd cousin, named Daniel, also a descendant of Christof and Elizabeth, welcomed the portrait of Daniel into his home.  Ninety five years after his life was taken, young Daniel Just still holds a place of honor in the home of a descendant who will keep his memory alive.

Carol Just

Prairie Lights, March 2013